Elon Musk

Democracy will be strong enough to take it now that Biden has done so much for the American people.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/10/musk-visits-twitter-hq-promises-staff-he-wont-fire-75-of-them/

Musk has an October 28 deadline to complete the $44 billion Twitter purchase, stemming from an order by Delaware Court of Chancery Judge Kathaleen McCormick. Twitter sued Musk after he tried to break their merger agreement, and a trial was originally scheduled for October 17. McCormick's order delaying the trial said it will be rescheduled for November if the merger isn't completed by 5 pm tomorrow.

Twitter shares are due to be suspended from trading on Friday in anticipation of the closing. The stock price has been rising since Musk reversed course in early October in order to avoid a trial and is now close to the $54.20 per-share price that Musk agreed to pay.

also

Today, Musk posted a message for advertisers. "The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence. There is currently great danger that social media will splinter into far right wing and far left wing echo chambers that generate more hate and divide our society," he wrote.

After spending months trying to get out of the merger deal, Musk told advertisers he is buying Twitter "to try to help humanity, whom I love." Attempting to convince companies that they should buy ads on the platform, he wrote that "Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences! In addition to adhering to the laws of the land, our platform must be warm and welcoming to all, where you can choose your desired experience according to your preferences, just as you can choose, for example, to see movies or play video games ranging from all ages to mature."

He went on to say that Twitter must show users "advertising that is as relevant as possible to their needs. Low relevancy ads are spam, but highly relevant ads are actually content! Fundamentally, Twitter aspires to be the most respected advertising platform in the world that strengthens your brand and grows your enterprise."

sounds like everything's gonna be fine then

So glad I don’t use Twitter and have no stakes in this except wanting it to fucking fail and wanting Musk embarrassed and preferably dead

but highly relevant ads are actually content!

gag me with the proverbial spoon.. I've been hearing versions of this for a few years now, trying to convince us that we'll come tolike ads if we only get to see the right ones for us. This is some Phillip K Dick bullshit

If ads are the new content they should pay me to read sites.

which is the far left echo chamber network and how do I sign up

lmao

Jim Cramer is tearing up over $META

Generational bottom in process pic.twitter.com/3tICGm6qoi

— Inverse Cramer ETF (Not Jim Cramer) (@CramerTracker) October 27, 2022

xp you're posting on it right now :)

haha "inverse cramer etf"

"Musk said his primary motivation for buying the company is to ensure the “future of civilization.” He said the goal is to preserve a “common digital town square,” where people with wide-ranging beliefs can debate their views without resorting to violence, rather than splintering into “far right-wing and far left-wing echo chambers.”

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 27, 2022"

This guy really has a savior complex

he sure is into the idea that the main purpose of town squares is the holding of debates.

for everyone looking to move to mastodon now that twitter's dying, i have some news for you: Evidence Of Ancient Giants Unearthed In Vietnam

— big baby (wailing) (@dec_in_stone) October 27, 2022

Very soon, Elon will be Twitter's only employee, circling the earth high above us in a Space X pod, saving civilization one unmoderated tweet at a time... Silent Running on social media

The $TSLA Cyberquad for kids has been recalled for not meeting safety standards https://t.co/UhZPHV2O9w via @verge

— BertelSchmitt™ 🇺🇦💉💉💉💉🎩🎩🎩🎩🎩 (@BertelSchmitt) October 27, 2022

As one of his first moves, he fired several top Twitter executives, according to three people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. One of those confirmed the deal had closed.

CEO Parag Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal, and Vijaya Gadde, head of legal policy, trust, and safety, were all fired, according to the people. Sean Edgett , the company’s general counsel, was also pushed out, one of the people said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/10/27/twitter-elon-musk

Previously reported to have declared that he will fire 75% of employees, which does not bode well for security, also he's been quite the troll on there from time to time, and the public square is already starting to smell strange. It's been fun, but I'm gone.

deactivated deleted. my account sucked anyway, because idngaf about twitter, but it would be a shame if something really terrible happened to it or musk.

you're leaving twitter? henry kissinger is still alive, and you're leaving twitter?

— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) October 28, 2022

the important thing about Elon buying twitter is we all have to act like Tumblr after Yahoo bought it. devalue this platform. make it much worse. stop "driving engagement" and start depression posting. block every promoted tweet. we can do this.

— Hazel Southwell (@HSouthwellFE) October 28, 2022

I instinctively block promoted tweets (they make it easier than any other platform) and for a while 99% of my ads were for HIV/PREP drugs and then that transitioned to ads aimed at doctors trying to get people to take them.

(the old story about Target predicting a teenager's pregnancy based on the algorithm had me worried for about a minute when the first HIV ad popped up.)

People saying they are going to leave because more bad ppl are going to come back assumes there aren't enough bad people posting today. Or that the situation was improving purely because a few accounts (Trump's) was finally put to rest. This is really, really not the case.

But if it becomes markedly worse at aggregation of opinion/news then it will be diminished.

Blue check marks for every scanner crimewatch account

Lol at this discussion

Am I the only person who thinks you would lose something if we all retreated into our little soc media walled gardens?

— Tom Munday (@tommundaycs) October 28, 2022

I've deactivated my barely used account. So you can look forward to a...slight reduction in embedded tweets on the uk pol thread.

All of the “free speech” platforms are unusable right wing cesspools due to the lack of moderation. If Musk wants to turn Twitter into that, good for him, it will lose all of its value to advertisers.

Twitter already does a bad job rooting out the troll accounts, the frog picture people and whatever. What they do right now is ban the big accounts that violate their policies, like Trump. With those people back on it will make the site shittier though as the trolls will feel like it is “their” space, they’ll have more big tweets to congregate around.

musk already told advertisers that hes not going to make it a right wing free for all, who knows what hell actually do, but theres really no angle to making it a total shithole, theres no point in owning it if people stop using it, which is happening anyway lol

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FgKI9WnVEAIQarz?format=jpg&name=900x900

thanks, bro!

absolute power currupts tweets

https://i.imgflip.com/1ibkfp.jpg

Musk about to let all the baddies back out.

the funny and likely thing that could happen here is musk making twitter more "free speech' causing advertisers and users to leave causing musk to roll back the free speech causing his loony fans to hate him

hopefully its value drops to the point where it can one day join the ilx family of apps

lol Josh - "it's true, this man has no dick"

I love people who are posting things like, "Now that we have free speech on Twitter, I can say ..." and then proceed to post dumb shit that was already on Twitter all the time.

I still think the best analogy to this is rich guys buying newspapers, which was also traditionally much more for clout and bragging rights than as a business proposition. But also, those rich guys almost always end up getting antsy when it turns out it's hard to actually make money running a media company, and one thing most rich guys really don't like is losing money. It's inconceivable to me that even as big a troll as Elon will not want return on $44 billion. And the reality is, there are only a few ways to make money from a media platform, no matter how large — basically some combination of advertising and subscriptions. Musk is apparently banking heavily on the latter, which seems like a reach to me, but who knows. People pay for all kinds of things I guess.

I remember the big deal when Sam Zell bought Tribune...then unceremoniously dumped it.

Anyone who is willing to pay for access to tweets doesn't deserve respect of any kind.

good summary

https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/28/23428132/elon-musk-twitter-acquisition-problems-speech-moderation

Like, a substack or a Patreon, I get it— oftentimes people are paying for long-form thinkpieces, or mixes, and they get something special out of supporting someone who isn't part of the regular media environment. Foxy Digitalis' return is a good example of this, at least in the music world.

But seriously— paying for some media asshole's tweets? Paying to access 280 character sharts? Please, only an absolute fucking dummy would do that.

I was thinking ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/14/technology/elon-musk-is-a-digital-citizen-kane.html

"But imagine that Musk eventually buys Twitter from the stockholders who own it today. The closest comparison to this might be the 19th-century newspaper barons like William Randolph Hearst, Joseph Pulitzer and the fictional Charles Foster Kane, who used their papers to pursue their personal agendas, sensationalize world events and harass their enemies."

Yep, but the difference is that at that point newspapers were pretty good business propositions.

Sam Zell destroyed the Tribune, and the assholes he hired there were like a preview of the Trump administration.

rosebud:
https://www.carscoops.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/c99fb3ee-tesla-fire-moscow.gif

subscriptions will never work for twitter. it will fail just like ilx premium did.

Maybe Twitter needs a 77 board

x post what if you had to pay to cancel?

Not surprisingly, as a long-time poster on a tiny niche message board, I kind of feel like all the big social media platforms are lame and the internet was better when it was made up mostly of small niche blogs and boards. So its hard for me to get too worked up about what will happen to Twitter.

Yeah I don't want to downplay its significance (e.g. Trump), but people on Twitter vastly overrate Twitter's actual importance.

"LIMITED OFFER: Get a FREE Twitter account when you buy any dozen at participating Krispy Kreme™ Doughnuts! Open your account today!"